tempus fugit

Republican House members, in last ditch effort to delay Mueller Russia probe and indictment of the President’s son, refuse to seat their picks for House Intelligence Committee

2019-01-30

The newly-minority Republican members of the House are supposed to seat their picks for the House Intelligence Committee so that it can begin business. The Democrats had theirs, and staff ready to go on January 3, when the House supposedly opened to a partially shuttered government. In move calculated to delay a certain specific bit of Intelligence Committee business, the Republican leadership hasn’t assigned any Republican members yet. They said they’d be ready last week. Then the government reopened, and they still aren’t ready.

Update 1:40 PM: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced the Republican members of the Intelligence Committee on the House floor Wednesday. Representative John Ratcliffe of Texas will join the committee, but the other Republican members remain the same. This is two weeks after the Democratic representatives were seated, with four new members. The Committee will now be able to formally meet and respond to Special Counsel Mueller’s request for certified copies of the testimonies in question. With these copies, Mueller will be able to charge the individuals involved with lying to Congress…

McCarthy claimed that the delay was the Democrat’s fault and had a long explanation. The rules for deciding who gets to sit on which committee are complex and involve term limits, to which two of the Republicans were subject. One received a waiver to remain on the committee, the other did not.

The committee did actually conduct some business today, holding an intelligence community briefing. POLITICO reported that Devin Nunes was invited to attend but did not show up.

The specific bit of business in hand is the provision of certified copies of the testimony of certain people very close to He who must not be named: his son Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, and a couple of other higher ups in the administration from Hell.

Donald Jr., in particular, is a sore spot for He who must not be named, because within minutes of Senator Blumenthal’s comment that Donald Jr.’s testimony was suspect, He tweeted his favorite insults about “Da Nang Dick” as He calls the poor fellow. It seems that Senator Blumenthal once made the mistake of claiming that he actually served in Vietnam rather than stateside, with a Marine Corps reserve unit. This was in 2008. By His standards, then, He who has lied 8,000 times in the last two years should be cleaning lavatories rather than be President of the United States.

This is beside the point. We all know that He who must not be named is a billionaire (or do we?) and therefore deserves anything he desires, while Senator Blumenthal is merely a multimillionaire and must bob for his apples (a cute expression, no?)

All sarcasm aside, damage that may take hundreds of years to repair is being done to our country. I refer especially to Joshua Tree National Monument, where, during the government shutdown, Parks security forces were furloughed, and vandals did massive damage to some of the oldest Joshua trees in the Monument. An expert predicted that the trees would take two to three hundred years to recover.

Strategic planning is therefore in order. In addition to direct resistance to His plans, we must maneuver the next election to become a Democratic blowout of all three parts of democratic government: the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. This can be done in this environment by attaching massive scandals to the Republican Party and all its members– except those who defect and vote Democratic. The best scandal of all, naturally, revolves around the Oval Office, and Republicans who cozy up to Him should be warned that they are not safe.

To maximize the scandal’s impact, it must be ongoing during election season: the three months before November 6, 2020. Therefore, impeaching and removing the President (and the Vice-President) should be delayed until then, if it is even possible. The best thing would be for the House Select Committee to announce that it had voted for impeachment in the summer or fall of 2020. Unfortunately for our country, He will continue to do damage until the moment he is removed from office, and leaving Pence in charge would only do further damage.